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whenever we play Pirate's cove, it seems that one player gets hopelessly behind and knows within the first few turns that they are going to lose unless a miracle happens. Anyone have any good ideas to help the player get back into the game? we thought of maybe having a mercy rule that if you lose three or four battles in a row, that player should get a round where they can choose an island and noone else can go there. Any other ideas to keep the game from getting so lopsided?

What I stated in the more exsited rule: make the black pirate turn random. This will give you 1 more island to choose from, so less change that the weakest link will be troubled by others (if he goes to some less interesting islands to boost up a bit) and the strong ones can hassle with the black pirate who unexpectedly turns up, damaging their ships creating a more even match.

I also like the random placement of the black pirate. We do both random placement and random pick each round to change up the game some. Of course, when he winds up attacking the weak player, it turns out even worse.